Lion Guardians

Category: Donations received | Date: Sep 14 2009 | By: lionguardians

The Lion Guardins would like to thank everyone who has supported us recently.

Thank you to: Katherine J, Samantha V, Scott R, Richard V, Black C, Lois C, Hashi H, Anne C, Diane K, Jessica F, Mary P, Pirjo I, Mary H, Shannon C, The F, Angela G, Kerryn W, Mike S, Sauwah T, Jason L, Ana L, Sheri H and Angela D. Here are the Mbirikani Lion Guardians at our last monthly meeting, who would all like to extend their thanks to you.

Your support is invaluable. We use the money donated through this blog to pay the Guardians’ wages, as well as for all the essential items that are used by them on a daily basis, like paper and pens so they can fill in their data forms, phone credit so they can call camp with their lion reports and all the other monthly costs that enable us to run the project effectively. Thank you so much for helping us to keep the Lion Guardians project running.

With the expansion of the project on to the new ranch Eselenkei, we have also been able to use your donations to pay for equipment for the new Guardians - backpacks to carry their equipment in, GPS devices, and receivers and aerials for tracking collared lions. With your donations you are helping the survival of cubs like these two, who are in Nempakai’s pride.

Now plans are underway to start the Lion Guardians program on Olgulului Group Ranch, another neighbouring ranch in the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem. With this step we will be expanding the project to an area which borders Amboseli National Park, and therefore has very high human wildlife conflict.

Please continue with your generous donations, so that we can make a difference to the lions throughout the whole ecosystem. There is no point conserving lions in one ranch if they might be killed when they wander into a neighbouring area!

Than you so much for your help!

Tags: cubs, donations, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

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Category: Lion Guardians work, Meet the lions | Date: Aug 05 2009 | By: lionguardians

You will probably remember the story of our collared female lion Nemasi and her 3 male cubs. Here is Nemasi and her cubs in March 2008.

In February we were very sad to come across a dead sub-adult lion on the side of a hill called Olasera. A herder had found the carcass while looking after his goats on the hillside. The lion had been dead for too long for us to identify who it was, or how it had died, but we suspected that it might have been one of Nemasi’s cubs.

It was possible that the cub had been killed by the male lion Lentim who had been spending time with Nemasi, and who is not the father of the cubs. Here are two of the cubs feeding in July 2008.

We spent a long time looking for Nemasi and her cubs so that we could see how many youngsters she had with her. One day we saw Nemasi with Lentim in the lava, but there were no cubs in sight. The Lion Guardians in the area kept finding tracks of 2 sub adults along with Nemasi’s tracks, so it was becoming more and more likely that it was one of hers that had died. But Nemasi remained elusive, hiding out in the lava, and never coming out so we couldn’t be certain about many offspring she had.

Last week we finally caught up with Nemasi, who was with her sub-adults out in an open area. Sadly she was only with two offspring. The dead lion on the hillside must have been one of hers. But the two remaining sub-adults were looking very well. They are both male, and are almost as big as Nemasi now! Here is the first of the male sub-adults:

And here is the second:

There is a huge amount of prey available for them at the moment, as there are so many weak animals around because of the drought, and the area that they were resting in was littered with wildebeest and zebra carcasses. They were certainly well fed, and very handsome! We can’t wait to see how these two young males develop, and where they will roam when they are old enough to leave Nemasi.

Keep reading the blog to find out! And, as always, thank you so much for your donations, without which we would not be able to continue to study and protect these amazing animals.

Tags: cubs, dead lion, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

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Category: Lion Guardian reports, Lion Guardians work, lion research fieldwork | Date: Aug 03 2009 | By: lionguardians

As we told you last week, we finally found our collared female lion Selenkay in Amboseli National Park. She had been wandering far and wide, around Amboseli and the surrounding communally owned Maasai land with 2 other females.

On Saturday we received a call from Lion Guardian Mokoi to tell us he had been following the tracks of 2 female lions on Mbirikani Group Ranch, not far from Mbirikani town, so we rushed over to meet him and find out who these lions were. We tracked from the top of a nearby hill, and found that it was Selenkay, who had come over from Amboseli with one other female!

Here is Selenkay’s beautiful friend.

We have asked Mokoi and Olubi, the Lion Guardians that work in the area closest to Selenkay’s latest position to keep a close eye on their movements, and to make sure that all the herders in the area know that they are close, so that they can keep their livestock in a different area.

The other members of the Tara pride are still located on our neighbouring ranch Eselenkei, where the new Lion Guardians are taking great pleasure in keeping track of this fantastic group of lions. Collared female Nosieki has 2 small cubs, and the other pride lioness Nasieku has 3 cubs. Here is Nosieki with one of her small cubs.

And here is one of Nasieku’s cubs, a few months older than Nosieki’s.

The cubs have great fun playing together, and with the male of the pride. The lions in Eselenkei and Mbirikani seem to be doing very well at the moment, probably because of the availability of weak prey, due to the drought. The Guardians are doing a brilliant job of monitoring their movements and reducing any possible conflicts between the local people and the carnivores.

Tags: Amboseli, cubs, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

6 responses so far

Category: Lion Guardian reports | Date: Mar 30 2009 | By: lionguardians

We hope that a lot of people watched 60 minutes last night and are eager to find out about the lions here in Maasailand, and what the Lion Guardians are doing to save them. If you missed it you can watch it here, and view the comments about whether a poison like Furadan should be still sold here in Kenya, when in other countries it has been banned because of its dangerous nature. I believe there must be other ways for crops to be treated for pests, and we do not need to use the kind of control that can also kill lions, and even people!

I have some great news for you about our Mbirikani lions. Yesterday we had a second report of the three young lion cubs that Lion Guardian Koikai reported to us a few weeks ago! The cubs are still small, probably around 3 or 4 months old, and although we don’t have a photo of them, we are told they are around the size of these cubs below.

We went to track in the area that they were spotted in, and did not pick up any signal, so it seems like we have a new female on our ranch, as well as the new cubs! I hope we can find them again soon, and bring you some photographs. 

Tags: 60 minutes, cubs, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lion poisoning, lions, Maasai, masai

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Category: Uncategorized, ways you can help | Date: Mar 12 2009 | By: lionguardians

Yesterday and today the work of Living with Lions features on Alex Chadwick’s Day to Day radio program, which airs in the US. Alex came to visit us back in June and we told him all about the critical decline in lion populations outside national parks in Kenya and showed him what Living with Lions and the Lion Guardians are doing to save them.

If you have missed it you can listen online by clicking here.

Please tell us what you think of the program - and tell all your friends to listen too. The more people that hear about our work, the more likely we are to get enough donations to keep it running! THANK YOU from all the Lion Guardians, and the Maasailand lions!

Tags: Alex Chadwick, cubs, Day to Day, donations, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, NPR, radio

One response so far

Category: Lion Guardians work | Date: Mar 11 2009 | By: lionguardians

We are still searching hard for Nemasi, the female collared lion, to see whether she has three cubs with her, or whether the young lion that was found dead might be one of her cubs.

We had found her signal in the morning, and seen her and a collared male lion, but did not see any cubs, so we decided to go back at night to try again. Lion Guardian Solonka and our camp manager Justus went to collect some bait to attract the lions out of the thick forest so we could see them. We were able to use a cow that had been attacked by hyenas the previous night.

We drove out to the place where we had picked up the signal of Lentim and Nemasi the previous night and tied the cow to a tree. With a loud speaker we played the sounds of a dying buffalo, and some lion roars to try and attract them out of the forest so we could see if the cubs were there. But from the sounds of their signals we could tell that they were on the move and were going in the opposite direction to us - further inside the lava.

Both Nemasi and Lentim are secretive lions, and it is always very hard to see them. But we are really eager to find out how many cubs are with Nemasi now, so we will keep trying until we get to see them. More on this story tomorrow!

Tags: cubs, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, missing

3 responses so far

Category: Lion Guardian reports | Date: Feb 03 2009 | By: lionguardians

The Guardians had a very successful end of month meeting. They brought us news from their areas of work, and told us they were all very happy as there has been some rain.

On the way to the meeting Lion Guardians Koikai and Lenkina discovered some lion tracks which they said were a female and some small cubs. They found the tracks near to one of our collared male lions Lentim (he is one of our 3 lions with GPS collars, whose tracks you can follow over the internet).

We were all very pleased to hear that there might be some new cubs in the area. After the meeting we sent Koikai and Lenkina back to the area to look around for more tracks, and we will give you any news about this when we have it. Wouldn’t it be great if we had some young cubs like this on our ranch?

Thanks so much to Pauline for telling us about the BBC programme. I am glad it was interesting. Hashi - I will ask whether your suggestion is possible.

Tags: BBC, cubs, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

4 responses so far

Category: Lion Guardian reports, lion research fieldwork | Date: Jan 23 2009 | By: lionguardians

Yesterday after a long day of searching we found the collared female lion Nemasi, and her three cubs. The Lion Guardians had not been able to locate them for months and we were becoming worried that we might have lost her completely, as no one had been able to pick up a signal from her collar. The Guardians used to find her quite close to our camp and we had been following the progress of her cubs since they were born over a year ago. Here they are in July feeding on a kill, when they were a lot younger.

Recently Nemasi had become very hard to find, especially as her collar has been picking up a strange screeching noise so it was hard to hear her signal. But three days ago lion biologist Stephanie picked up a weak signal from her collar from one of the hills nearby. We asked the Lion Guardians in the area to look around for her but none of them could find her tracks or pick up a signal.

Then yesterday we found her signal again from another hill and drove between high points all day to pinpoint her location. Eventually after about 6 hours of driving we found her and her cubs in some very dense bush, less than 2 kms from a road! We were so pleased to have found them at last, but they ran off quickly so we were not able to take any photos, except of her tracks.

Now we know her location we can keep good track of her and I hope we will be able to bring you some photos soon!

Tags: cubs, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, missing

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 19 2008 | By: lionguardians

On our last night at Eselenkei conservancy we went on a search for lions before heading back to Mbirikani Group Ranch. We had been told various times by the guys at the camp that lions could be seen easily, even though none of them have collars. We started our search at around 9.30pm and the first animal we saw was a genet. It was a bit shy so we could only see the long round tip of its tail and the elongated snout. I have posted a picture of a friendly genet that comes and sits in our office so you can see what they look like. (This one likes eating biscuits)!

After just a few metres we saw a serval cat. She was in the process of hunting and due to the long grass we could not see the prey. We proceeded along to find our lion. Wilson Kasaine who was the spotter guide saw some movement and we stopped. Just 200 meters ahead was a female lion. In the distance we could see some wildebeest and zebras running away. Within a second she disappeared. The guys knew their way around the place well, so we drove around the thick bush. After about 10 minutes we saw her lying down, trying to master the movement of her prey.

One of the guides happened to know a little bit about this lioness, who they think has some cubs of her own. She is the only survivor from her litter - her three siblings were killed three years ago on Eselenkei, and her mother has only been seen once after the killing of the other cubs.

The thing that surprised me the most was that this lioness is not scared of cars. She came right up close to the car, something lions on Mbirikani will never do. They are so shy that we are never able to get close to them.

Just a reminder - if you want us to send you a gift certificate, you must request one in a comment on the blog as well as giving the donation. A big thank you to everyone who has bought a certificate so far. There is still time, if you want a gift certificate!

Tags: cubs, eselenkei, genet, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, mbirikani, porini

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Category: Donations received | Date: Oct 31 2008 | By: lionguardians

Thank you so much for your donations over the last month. I am especially glad to see we have some new donors on the site. Thank you all for reading the blog and supporting our work. Here is a photo of the plains near to our camp, where the Lion Guardians located one of our collared lions Nemasi recently.

We couldn’t continue to help the lions and the communities here without you, so please carry on reading our news, tell your friends about the Lion Guardians and donate to us if you can. Here is Nemasi, with one of her three cubs.

Our thanks go out to Black C, Loki Q, Anna M, Tanya D, Pirjo I, Lisa R, Hashi H, Jia L, Deb O, Susan A, Eric B, Evan B, Micheal B, Louis B, Richard G and Richard V, who have all made donations to us in October.

Tags: cubs, donations, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

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